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Ugly Truths: CNS Saddam Hussein and OCCASIONAL PAPER #17 MARCH 2013 Other Insiders on Iraq’S Covert Bioweapons

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Ugly Truths: CNS Saddam Hussein and OCCASIONAL PAPER #17 MARCH 2013 Other Insiders on Iraq’S Covert Bioweapons Ugly Truths: CNS Saddam Hussein and OCCASIONAL PAPER #17 MARCH 2013 Other Insiders on Iraq’s Covert Bioweapons Amy E. Smithson, PhD The funding support for this research study has been provided by the Army Research Office MINERVA INITIATIVE The views, assessments, judgments, and conclusions in this report are the sole representations of the author and do not necessarily represent either the official position or policy or bear the endorsement of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the President and Trustees of Middlebury College, the United States Government, the Department of Defense, or the Army Research Office. JAMES MARTIN CENTER FOR NONPROLIFERATION STUDIES nonproliferation.org The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) strives to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction by training the next generation of nonproliferation specialists and disseminating timely information and analysis. CNS at the Monterey Institute of International Studies is the largest nongovernmental organization in the United States devoted exclusively to research and training on nonproliferation issues. Monterey Institute of International Studies www.miis.edu The Monterey Institute of International Studies, a graduate school of Middlebury College, provides international professional education in areas of critical importance to a rapidly changing global community, including international policy and management, translation and interpretation, language teaching, sustainable development, and nonproliferation. We prepare students from all over the world to make a meaningful impact in their chosen fields through degree programs characterized by immersive and collaborative learning, and opportunities to acquire and apply practical professional skills. Our students are emerging leaders capable of bridging cultural, organizational, and language divides to produce sustainable, equitable solutions to a variety of global challenges. James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Monterey Institute of International Studies 460 Pierce St., Monterey, CA 93940, U.S.A. Tel: +1 (831) 647-4154 Fax: +1 (831) 647-3519 ISBN 978-0-9892361-0-2 © The President and Trustees of Middlebury College, March 2013 Cover image: www.istockphoto.com UGLY TRUTHS: SADDAM HUSSEIN AND OTHER INSIDERS ON IRAQ’S COVERT BIOWEAPONS PROGRAM AMY E. SMITHSON, PHD JAMES MARTIN CENTER FOR NONPROLIFERATION STUDIES March 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 2 Search Methodology for the CRRC Database 3 Research Findings 4 Morality after the Fact 4 Obfuscating Iraq’s Weaponization of Biowarfare Agents 6 Oversight of Biological Activities in Iraq 8 Saddam’s Views about the Utility of Unconventional Weapons 9 Saddam Calls the Shots, Literally 10 Coping with UNSCOM Inspections in the Early Years 12 Saddam’s Inner Circle Plots to Foil UNSCOM’s Biological Investigation 15 Iraq’s Biological Cover Story Crumbles 19 Lessons on Survival in Saddam’s Iraq 23 Aziz Champions the Cause 26 Conclusions 28 Endnotes 30 - 1 - Ugly Truths: Saddam Hussein and Other Insiders on Iraq’s Covert Bioweapons Program INTRODUctiON Although the inspections of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which operated from April 1991 to October 1998, unmasked Iraq’s biological weapons program and revealed a considerable amount of detail about its planning, organization, and execution, various factors about the program remain unclear. These gaps in information persisted through the activities and reporting of both the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspections Commission, which existed from December 1999 until the outbreak of the second Gulf War in March 2003, and the Iraq Survey Group, which reported on the remnants of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities after the 2003 Gulf War.1 To deepen understanding about Iraq’s biological weapons program, a team of analysts from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) identified a number of research questions that, if answered, would provide a more comprehensive account of Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons programs. The twenty research questions ran the gamut of relevant topics. Specifically with regard to the bioweapons program, the research questions sought to clarify the reasons behind Iraq’s choice of biowarfare agents and delivery systems, the timeline and technical specifics for certain activities, possible interaction with governments and biowarfare experts outside of Iraq, the management of the program, and the details of how Iraq disposed of its biological munitions and bulk biowarfare agent. In an effort to answer some or all of these questions, CNS’s staff turned to the records of the Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) database. In mid-July 2011, the time in which CNS’s staff reviewed the CRRC records for information pertinent to Iraq’s biological weapons program, it should be noted that a relatively small fraction of the documents in the possession of the CRRC had been translated into English and made available in the CRRC database. Accordingly, the review of the database did not turn up a tremendous number of documents providing insights about Iraq’s biological weapons program. Nonetheless, the review uncovered several documents that shed light largely on the political management of Iraq’s bioweapons program and how Iraq’s leaders tried to cope with UNSCOM’s inspections. This report, which begins with a brief review of the search methodology, otherwise presents the research findings in rough but not exact chronological order. To help the reader quickly grasp the relevance of the research findings in a history that is complicated and sometimes full of technical detail, the research findings are interlaced with background derived largely from Germ Gambits: The Bioweapons Dilemma, Iraq and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2011). Germ Gambits, which tells the tale of UNSCOM’s bioweapons inspections in Iraq, is based primarily on interviews with UNSCOM inspectors, buttressed by UNSCOM documents and secondary materials. Therefore, any citation to Germ Gambits is based on numerous authoritative sources. Because this report provides the unadulterated Iraqi view on certain topics, in a certain sense it is like seeing the other side of the coin that Germ Gambits presents. CNS Senior fellow Amy E. Smithson, PhD, wrote Germ Gambits and was the principal researcher reviewing the biological weapons-related documents in the CRRC database. - 2 - March 2013 Search Methodology for the CRRC Database Combing a large electronic database for information relevant to specific research questions is best accomplished by using keyword search terms. Prior to July 2011, CNS researchers provided the staff of the CRRC with terms and timeframes specific to the Iraqi biological weapons program that might have drawn particularly compelling documents from the CRRC database, providing such documents had already been translated and, of course, that the Iraqis had used these terms in the documents. For example, “Project 324” became a search term because this was the code name for Iraq’s main bioweapons production facility, Al Hakam, which the Iraqis began building in 1988 in total secrecy. Other search terms included the names of personnel known to be in the bioweapons program and the keywords likely to be in the title of an important document—Iraq’s 1989 annual report on its bioweapons program—that was never turned over to inspectors. The preferred search timeframes selected were from 1988 to 1991 and November 1994 to April 1996 because during these time periods, respectively, the Iraqis ramped up the bioweapons program or were urgently scrambling to hide details from the inspectors, who nonetheless gathered sufficient evidence to compel Iraq to admit limited production of biowarfare agents on July 1, 1995. These preliminary searches using tailored search terms did not produce any hits within the database. Therefore, the July 2011 search activity switched search strategies and employed nineteen relatively generic search terms, such as “biological weapon” and “special weapon,” as well as locations and biowarfare agents known to have been part of Iraq’s bioweapons program. These search terms produced “hits” in 225 documents across twenty-one categories of the CRRC’s Saddam Hussein/ Iraq collection. The majority of hits were in the CRCC categories referred to as the Saddam Tapes, the General Military Intelligence Directorate, Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Miscellaneous. The search terms that drew the most hits were “biological weapon,” “biological,” and a combined search of “biological” and “Al Muthanna,” a facility principally known as the home of Iraq’s chemical weapons program. Al Muthanna, as UNSCOM inspectors discovered, also conducted research, development, testing, and filling of biological weapons. CNS staff reviewed all 225 documents for pertinent information, and they were quickly able to dismiss the lion’s share as having no information that would contribute to a more complete history of Iraq’s biological weapons program. For instance, a number of documents referred to biological weapons only in passing, with no elaboration whatsoever. CNS staff pulled excerpts from 101 documents for closer scrutiny. The research findings herein are based on those excerpts. A closer reading of these documents provided, as the report elaborates, some interesting insights into how Iraqi decision makers weighed their interactions with UNSCOM as they attempted to hide as much
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